Part 2
Jiang Chenyan ignored the system’s madness. He looked up at the middle-aged couple and greeted them in a neither-warm-nor-cold manner: “Father, Mother.”
Father Jiang’s face was already dark. Hearing this, his brows furrowed even more. His tone carried a bit of impatience: “Your wings have grown strong. It’s quite hard to even see you once.”
“That’s quite an unfair thing to say.” Jiang Chenyan curled his lips and smiled back as he countered, “With your status and mine, how would I ever dare to not see you?”
Father Jiang was choked. He clearly hadn’t expected that after not seeing him for a few days, this usually submissive person would actually dare to speak to him like this. His face darkened further.
Jiang Chenyan vaguely realized his persona had slipped a bit, so he immediately pulled back his smile and lowered his eyes, no longer speaking.
After that, no matter what Father Jiang or Mother Jiang said, Jiang Chenyan only lowered his head and nodded in response, looking no different from before.
Father Jiang spoke for a long time. Seeing him remain in this state, he completely lost his patience.
This brat had been zoning out the whole time; he hadn’t listened at all.
“By the way, your eldest brother is here too. He’s waiting outside.”
“Eldest brother?” Jiang Chenyan looked up.
He had also researched this titular eldest brother, Jiang Xuanshen—a rather complex figure.
This person was definitely powerful in reality. He was quick-witted and ruthless enough. Without a background or backing, he had relied on himself to climb the ranks.
How to put it? The fact that the Jiang family could develop at all was largely thanks to this eldest son.
But it was different in the novel. Like Jiang Chenyan, he was just a background character whose name readers might not even remember.
“I’m coming in.”
A voice as cold as icicles came from the door. Jiang Chenyan looked over. The person was very tall with broad shoulders and long legs. A black uniform made his aura extremely strong. His sharp features radiated a coldness that warned people not to come near.
He looked strangely familiar, like he had seen him somewhere before.
Father Jiang reminded him impatiently, “What are you doing just standing there? Call him ‘Eldest Brother’.”
The more he looked at this brat, the more he found him an eyesore—unruly and hard to manage.
Jiang Chenyan snapped out of it, suppressing that slight sense of oddity. “Eldest Brother.”
Jiang Xuanshen didn’t respond. His cold eyes landed directly on him. “You had quite a good time at the bar last night.”
Jiang Chenyan froze completely, and his mind buzzed.
No wonder he had felt the man looked familiar. The one who had been hauntedly staring at him at the bar last night was actually Jiang Xuanshen.
He couldn’t entirely be blamed. The light in the bar was ridiculously dim, and the colorful lights were flashing around, making it impossible to see faces clearly. Besides, people in reality differ from their photos; the man had a few more degrees of cold hardness than in his photos. He had never connected the two.
The moment he realized, Jiang Chenyan’s face gradually turned pale.
How embarrassing.
“…”
Jiang Xuanshen stood where he was, looking at Jiang Chenyan expressionlessly. “Your courage truly is getting bigger and bigger.”
He didn’t even know to greet him when they met; was he pretending not to know him?
Jiang Chenyan curled his lips. He wasn’t particularly afraid of him and replied casually, “It’s alright, I guess.”
As soon as these words were out, Father and Mother Jiang’s expressions were a bit delicate.
Was it because he had differentiated into an SS+ level that he was now speaking without any fear?
Jiang Xuanshen’s face instantly darkened, the coldness around him even stronger. He said to Father and Mother Jiang in a deep voice, “I have something to say to him alone.”
Father and Mother Jiang exchanged a look but didn’t ask further. They quickly stood up and left the lounge, closing the door behind them.
Only the two were left in the room. Jiang Xuanshen went straight to the point. “Leave the military academy. You can’t survive here.”
Jiang Chenyan looked up to meet his gaze. “You haven’t tried, so how do you know I can’t survive?”
“Don’t forget how many people you’ve offended outside.” Jiang Xuanshen’s brows furrowed. He simply treated Jiang Chenyan as someone who was immature and needed discipline. “Don’t think I’m not aware of those little tricks of yours.”
“If I offended them, then I offended them. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong?” Jiang Xuanshen’s voice turned a few degrees colder. “Then have you ever considered the family?”
Seeing that Jiang Chenyan didn’t speak, he said again in a deep voice, “The Xie family isn’t someone you can provoke. If you truly push them too far, do you think our family can cover for you?”
Jiang Chenyan spoke in a low voice, “I don’t need you to cover for me.”
“What did you say?” Jiang Xuanshen clearly hadn’t expected him to say that. His tone became a bit more sharp. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I know very well.” Jiang Chenyan looked up at him. “At worst, you can just tell the world that there’s no such person as me in the Jiang family.”
These words were like a thorn, suddenly stabbing into Jiang Xuanshen’s heart.
He stared at Jiang Chenyan for a few seconds. His face instantly became cold to the extreme, his knuckles turning white as he gripped them. Even his breathing deepened, and the low pressure around him made it hard for people to breathe.
“I don’t want to hear those words a second time.” Jiang Xuanshen’s voice was deathly cold. He added another sentence, every word sounding like it was being hammered into the floor: “But remember this well: without the Jiang family, you are nothing.”
Nothing at all?
Jiang Chenyan was so angry he laughed. “Being nothing now doesn’t mean it’ll be the same in the future.”
He told Jiang Xuanshen word for word, “I will win.”
Just three words, yet they were spoken with great weight.
If losing meant paying a painful price, then he must win.
Perhaps because Jiang Chenyan’s gaze was too scorching, Jiang Xuanshen suddenly avoided his eyes. His tone was flat, yet every word poked at Jiang Chenyan’s heart: “You can’t do it.”
Jiang Chenyan had never been valued since he was a child. He had almost never learned anything military-related, so how could he win?
Reality was like that—very cruel.
Jiang Chenyan didn’t argue further, feeling that there was no point in talking. He stood up to open the door and said coldly, “I will use my strength to prove myself.”
Just as he touched the door, Jiang Xuanshen’s voice came from behind, as cold as if it were wrapped in a layer of ice: “If you lose, go home obediently.”
Jiang Chenyan’s steps paused briefly. He didn’t look back or respond. He opened the door forcefully and walked out without a second’s pause.
Father and Mother Jiang saw him come out and wanted to stop him, but they were restrained by a look from Jiang Xuanshen.
“Let him go.”
He would come back obediently.
Winning wasn’t easy.
Jiang Chenyan was beyond angry. He felt a sense of suffocation in his heart. What did ‘if you lose, go home’ mean? What did ‘without the Jiang family, you are nothing’ mean?
While he was annoyed, he saw Shen Shiyue, Ji Xuan, and the others waving to him from not far away. They had clearly been waiting for a while.
He took a deep breath and walked over quickly, following the group toward the plaza. They were about to enter the simulator.
The plaza was already bustling with people. Various teams in different colored uniforms were gathered together.
A huge screen hanging in the air was lit up, refreshing each team’s grouping information and point status in real-time, including tracking each team’s movements in the simulator.
A deafening blast suddenly erupted, instantly drowning out the noise on the plaza.
The next second, almost everyone was simultaneously enveloped in the simulator’s white light, disappearing from the spot.
Not long after entering the simulator, the group discovered something was wrong.
The task required them to get points by killing the “army,” but these military characters not only had fierce firepower, their tactics were also extremely tricky. They were ridiculously hard to kill; if one wasn’t careful, they’d be killed by the other instead.
On the plaza, the names of some teams had already turned gray, having been killed and eliminated.
The people outside the simulator instantly exploded. “What’s going on? It wasn’t this hard in previous years! Why did the difficulty suddenly increase?”
“What are they doing? They’re just freshmen. Won’t they all be wiped out?”
“I really don’t know what the school is thinking. But this really can bring out the level of outstanding students.”
As soon as the words were out, a bright red notification suddenly popped up on the huge screen in the sky:
[Team 13 has killed Team 23. All members of Team 24 are ‘dead’.]
[500 points added.]
This time, the entire audience erupted into a thunderous roar. 500 points! That was several times more than the points obtained by killing the army NPCs!
Inside the simulator, Jiang Chenyan and the others completely understood. The school’s true purpose was to have them slaughter each other.
Not far away, teams were already heading toward them…
And it was several teams at once.
They had formed an alliance.
Recommended Reads
